Captioning and Subtitling Services

Posts tagged ‘Court Reporting & Captioning Week’

What do captioners, court reporters, and Edgar A. Brown have in common?

Marker and Bust in Edgar A Brown Building on SC State House Grounds

A Little SC History for Court Reporting & Captioning Week

Brown was commissioned as a court stenographer for the South Carolina Second Judicial Circuit in 1908. Brown was an Old South democrat with political aspirations. In 1920, he was elected to the SC House of Representatives and was Speaker of the House between 1925 and 1926. Brown ran for a SC Senate seat and won, starting his long and successful senatorial career. From 1942 to 1972, he served as the President Pro Tempore of the Senate and Chairman of Senate Finance, making him one of the most powerful men in South Carolina politics. He was allegedly a leader of the secret “Barnwell Ring.” There stands a marker in Barnwell entitled, “The Barnwell Ring.” It reads in part, “Loved, Feared, and Fought! Was it real or fiction?” We might never know.<!–more–>

What about Brown’s connection to modern-day broadcast captioners?

Brown cared deeply for education as evidenced by his support of Clemson University. He served on the Clemson Board of Trustees as a member, life trustee, and president of the board. His passion sparked South Carolina Educational Television, a public television network. Brown’s “most shining star” was a model for ETV stations throughout the nation.

Today, the Public Broadcasting System is served by real-time captioners who create live captions for ETV viewers watching live programming. Broadcast captioners are professionals with honed stenographic skills from the very court-reporting industry from which Brown himself started. We think he’d be especially impressed with the work of CART providers, those stenographers who write realtime onsite or remotely through the Internet for hard-of-hearing or deaf persons requesting accommodations granted under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or for student who have it written into their Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) plans.